Glen Martin Taylor: THE DILEMNA OF BEING HUMAN

Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 2024, 5-8pm

My work explores the brokenness in trying to be a person, the messy mending of healing, and the dilemma of being human. My work is my interpretation of the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi.

Mandy Cano Villalobos: DELECTABLE GOODS PROFIT NOT

Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 2024, 5-8pm

Delectable Goods Profit Not” portrays home as a place just out of reach. A nostalgic mass of glass figurines, frayed linens, and derelict toys play upon Western stereotypes of “grandma”, comfort, and childhood memories (both real and imagined). This domestic hoard symbolizes a place of belonging, a never-changing sanctuary of acceptance and solace. But nothing is permanent. The centerpiece – a vacant chair – suggests absence and death. Red velvet stanchions block access to the familiar items that beckon viewers approach. Our desires for home, and all its associations, remain unfulfilled. In its place lingers alienation and longing.

Nichole Maury: LANDMARKS

Opening Reception: Friday, August 2, 2024, 5-8pm

I have developed a complicated, and sometimes contentious, relationship with the idea of home. A life interrupted by frequent movement, especially as a child, has left me with memories that are often uneven and ill-defined. Sometimes there are only fragments, a steep hill, an ugly red-patterned carpet, the sound of plastic on the windows in winter. Home was never a place of permanence or stability. Instead, I found comfort in the classroom, with its clearly defined rules and predictable routines. I performed these requisite and seemingly infinite acts of repetition, these rituals, stretched out on a faded flower comforter in my bedroom or tucked into some quiet corner of the house.

Curator: Casey Whittier

Joe Forte: AMERICAN WALLPAPER

Opening Reception: Friday, June 7, 2024, 5-8pm

My work is about glaring imperfection, repurposed into beauty. Things ripped up or discarded, put back together. Reassembling old narratives, turning them into new ones.

Beth LeFauve: LOST and FOUND

Opening Reception: Friday, June 7, 2024, 5-8pm

I tell myself I’m not a junk collector, that my studio isn’t filled with lost and discarded materials, rather, my studio is filled with possibilities. Working strategically, I relish that creative moment when objects come together to offer a new story. A place where my story meets yours — evoking for you, the viewer, your own personal narrative. My goal is for the work to spark a dialogue with you, to transcend the objects themselves —so that you too are found.

Ceres Gallery New York/ ARC Gallery Chicago

Opening Reception: Friday, May 3, 2024, 5-8pm

Ceres Gallery is a feminist, not-for-profit, alternative gallery in New York City dedicated to the promotion of contemporary women in the arts. Ceres provides an exhibition space that enhances public awareness and helps remediate women’s limited access to commercial galleries. It also serves as a supportive base for a diversity of artistic and political views.

Ruti Modlin: ROOTED

Opening Reception: Friday, May 3, 2024, 5-8pm

Ruti Modlin’s show is inspired by our relationship with trees, who stand as tall, silent witnesses to the evolution of our human existence. Trees breathe life into our shared ecosystem. Our lives are intertwined and symbiotic. The temple-like structured living Conservatories, allow us to experience tranquil meditative escapes, a sense of emotional rootedness while across all cultures, trees symbolize the connection of the earthly and the divine wisdom.

Curator: Curtis Anthony Bozif

Jessica Gondek: IRONMADES: Dualisms

Opening Reception: Friday, March 1, 2024, 5-8pm

My work endeavors to blur the distinction between hand and machine. “Ironmades” is a nod to the early 20th century Dada movement engaged with machinery and manufactured items. In 1916 Marcel Duchamp coined the term readymades, elevating mass-produced objects to the status of art. Of special note is Man Ray’s “The Gift” created in 1921, a sculpture of an everyday flat iron modified with brass tacks adhered to the sole plate. This transformation subverted the iron’s intended function to smooth clothing. As an artist, I continue building on this tradition to bring it into the digital era of the 21st century as our relationship with technology continues to evolve.

Abigail Engstrand: MARCH ON

Opening Reception: Friday, March 1, 2024, 5-8pm

As an artist  I am always looking at bodies, and reading relationships. I tune in to my senses, trying to really see and understand the world around me.  I anthropomorphize and empathize with life I find in nature. I love to tend a garden, and watch life’s cycles.

N. Dia Webb: TO THE SAINTS OF MY SANITY

Opening Reception Fri. March 1, 2024, 5-8pmpm

Humanity’s fascination with issues of the mind fails to account for its fragility and how quickly everything can unravel. There is an unspoken expectation when creating work about mental health that it is based strictly on trauma. My artwork is informed by delving into divergent issues that come from mental health while combating societal stigma surrounding speaking about these struggles.

"FOREVER IS COMPOSED OF NOWS"

Opening Reception Fri. Feb 2, 5-8pm

Iris Goldstein, a long-time member of ARC Gallery, is exhibiting colored-pencil drawings at the gallery in February 2024. Goldstein is always interested in the unusual and offbeat. Though she is committed to nonobjective art, she tries to find visual images that are suggestive and allusive, based on real-life objects or places that are transformed through the artist's imagination.

Stacey Lee Gee: I’LL WORSHIP ANYTHING Opening Reception Fri. Jan 5, 5-8pm

Put anything in front of me and I’ll worship it. Worship zooms me into a thing and zooms me out to the absence of myself.

One part deep history, one part plexiglass from Home Depot. The collaboration of old and the new, the history of myself and the space. The arrangement of objects in a particular room at a particular time.

The care that goes into worshiping something is the kind of humanity I wish for.

Sessah DelaRue: THE SPACE BETWEEN WAS AND IS

Opening Reception Fri. Jan 5, 2024, 5-8pm

Curator: David Reif

Lee Stanton: OUT OF THE BLUE  Opening Reception Fri.  Sept 8, 5-8pm

White on blue. A line. An identifiable path created by a point moving in space. Look up! Lines, a trail of condensed water from an aircraft at high altitude, a white streak across the sky. Intangible, the sky has no surface; it cannot be turned into a thing or given a quantity. It may represent infinity, eternity, immortality, transcendence, or simply inspiration. As the traditional residence of gods and goddesses the sky may suggest omnipotence. The sky may also be symbolic of order in the universe. How might our interference with the environment alter these responses, drawing lines across the vista. In this series, views of land or anything else which might help to suggest scale or orientation is decidedly absent, excluded, and kept to a minimum. Infinite possibilities.

Michelle Williams: RETROSPECTIVE: A Journey Through Time Opening Reception Fri. Sept 8, 5-8pm

This show spans over 30 years of my beaded sculptures. Before bead art, I worked with tapestry, weaving, baskets, embroidery and crochet. In 1989, on a trip to Jamaica, I began exploring bead art using basic couching techniques and the human form. The first in that series, I called “First in Series.” My sculptures have won prizes and been featured in several Bead Art books.